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KDE 1.93 Release Announcement

DATELINE AUGUST 23, 2000

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New KDE Desktop Beta Available for Linux®

Fourth Beta Preview of Leading Desktop for Linux® and Other UNIXes®

August 23, 2000 (The INTERNET). The KDE
Team today announced the release of KDE 1.93, the fourth beta preview
of Kopernicus, KDE's next-generation, powerful, modular desktop. Following
on the heels of the release of KDE 1.92 on July 27, 2000, the release,
code-named "Kooldown", is based on a beta of
Trolltech'stm
upcoming Qt® 2.2.0 and will include the core libraries,
the core desktop environment, the KOffice suite, as well
as the over 100 applications from the other standard base KDE packages:
Administration, Games,
Graphics, Multimedia, Network, Personal Information Management (PIM),
Toys and Utilities.
Kooldown is targeted at users who would like to help the
KDE team make usability and feature enhancements and fix the remaining
set of bugs before the release of KDE 2.0 ("Kopernicus"), scheduled
for early-fourth quarter 2000.

The major changes since the beta 3 release ("Korner") last month include:

"It is really great to work together with all of the dedicated developers,
translators, artists, documentation writers and beta users. I'm very proud of
the results that we have achieved with this release and I hope that
our users enjoy it just as much," said core developer Waldo Bastian.
"Given the massive amount of fixes and improvements in
usability as well as appearance, this beta preview could also have been
labeled a pre-release candidate for Kopernicus," added core developer Lars Knoll.

Kooldown offers a usable desktop for a non-critical production environment.
The principal benefits lie in the cutting-edge technologies provided by
Konqueror and
the KOffice suite, in
KDE's enhanced customizability and in KDE's continued improvements in
ease of use.

Konqueror reigns as the next-generation
web browser, file manager and
document viewer for KDE 2.0. Widely acclaimed as a technological
break-through for the Linux desktop, Konqueror has a component-based
architecture which combines the features and functionality of Internet
Explorer®/Netscape Communicator® and
Windows Explorer®. Konqueror will support
the full gamut of current Internet technologies, including
JavaScript, Java®, HTML 4.0, CSS-2
(Cascading Style Sheets), SSL (Secure Socket Layer for secure communications)
and Netscape Communicator® plug-ins (for
playing FlashTM,
RealAudioTM, RealVideoTM and similar technologies).
In addition,
Konqueror's network transparency offers seamless support for browsing
Linux® NFS shares, Windows® SMB shares,
HTTP pages, FTP directories as well as any other protocol for which
a KIO plug-in is available.

The KOffice suite is one of the most-anticipated
Open Source projects. The suite consists
of a spreadsheet application (KSpread), a vector drawing application
(KIllustrator), a bitmap drawing application (KImageShop), a frame-based
word-processing application (KWord), a presentation program (KPresenter),
and a chart and diagram application
(KChart). Native file formats are XML-based, and work on
filters for proprietary binary file formats is progressing.
Combined with a powerful scripting language and the
ability to embed individuals components within each other using KDE's
KParts technology, the KOffice
suite will provide all the necessary functionality to all but the most
demanding power users, at an unbeatable price -- free.

Installing Binary Packages

The binary packages for Kooldown will be available for free download under
ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/distribution/2.0Beta4/
or under the equivalent directory at one of the many KDE ftp server
mirrors. Kooldown requires
qt2.2.0-beta2, which is available from the above locations under the name
qt-x11-2.2.0-beta2.
Please be advised that Kooldown will not work with any
older versions of Qt. Qt is not part of KDE's beta testing.

Check the ftp servers periodically for pre-compiled packages for other
distributions. More binary packages will become available over the
coming days.

About KDE

KDE is an independent, collaborative project by hundreds of developers
worldwide to create a sophisticated, customizable and stable desktop environment
employing a component-based, network-transparent architecture.
Currently development is focused on KDE 2, which will for the first time
offer a free, Open Source, fully-featured office suite and which promises to
make the Linux desktop as easy to use as Windows® and
the Macintosh®
while remaining loyal to open standards and empowering developers and users
with Open Source software. KDE is working proof of how the Open Source
software development model can create first-rate technologies on par with
and superior to even the most complex commercial software.